What is Open Manifesto
Definition
Open Manifesto is an open standard for electoral manifestos. It is a structured format that political parties can follow when publishing their manifestos in order to facilitate citizens' understanding and capacity to demand accountability.
How is it achieved?
- By applying the same format and structure to the electoral manifestos of all political parties, making it easier to compare them.
- By organizing the proposals of political parties in an explicit and concrete manner, classified by topics. In this way it becomes easier to know the positions and proposals of different political parties concerning any given issue, thus allowing you to make more informed decisions.
- By indicating the level of importance political parties give to each of their proposals. You could find out, for instance, the "red lines" they are not prepared to cross and the order of implementation of their proposals.
- By publishing electoral manifestos in an open format that is easy to access. The information contained in the manifestos is accessible to everyone, at any time (even after elections), for consultation or to be reused for other purposes.
- By transforming the electoral manifestos into a manageable and accessible instrument for citizens, not only for political parties.
- By improving the capacity for cooperation and dialogue between political parties, public administrations, social agents and citizens.
- By allowing the interconnection of electoral manifestos with other political information.
Latest version
The current version of OM we are working with is v1.0. It includes attributes to describe the electoral manifestos and the proposals it contains.
ELECTORAL MANIFESTO
- Name of the political party
- Title
- Date of publication
- Election date for which the manifesto has been prepared
- Type of electoral contest (European, national, regional or municipal)
- Geographic area (name of the country, region or municipality)
- Version of the standard under which the manifesto is published
- URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) for the standardized version of the manifesto
- Number of pages
- Number of proposals
- List of proposals
PROPOSALS
- ID number
- Proposal text
- Main topic of the proposal
- List of specific sub-topics dealt with in the proposal
- Priority level according to the political party (low, medium, high, N/A)
- Budget for implementing the proposal
- Indication of whether the proposal is negotiable or not
- List of agents included or mentioned in the proposal